A To Z Blogging Challenge 2025: Mysteries: V is for Nury Vittachi

 

Nury Vittachi is a Hong Kong writer whom I once heard speak at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. We exchanged emails for a while. He is a very funny man and it shows in his writing. He has done a lot more than mysteries - children’s and YA fantasy are among his other work. 

But he created a series called The Feng Shui Detective, which is set in Singapore and centred around C.F. Wong, a Feng shui master, whose day job as a geomancer involves designing offices and houses which follow the practice of feng shui. Feng shui is a Chinese practice that involves arranging objects and space to optimise the flow of positive energy. Even Wong’s tiny office is meant to face in certain directions to make sure he gets the most out of it.

But crime somehow always gets into the picture. And on top of it all, Wong is having to supervise an intern on her gap year, an Australian girl called Joyce McQuinnie, who wants to work with him and learn about feng shui to help her get into her chosen university course. He has been promised a pay rise for helping her and her own pay will be taken care of.

Here is the first description of Joyce, who has just promised to be quiet. 

Wong realised immediately that this person could not be quiet, even if she had her larynx surgically removed. Her look was not quiet. She was big. She wore bright colours. She was a Westerner. It would be as logical for a giraffe to say he is inconspicuous because he has no voice.” 

Very colourful! 

Wong is a sort of Asian Sherlock Holmes, with Joyce as his Watson. It sounds a little strange, but it works. The humour is a delight, as are the characters, who travel around Asia solving crimes. There is even one book which happens in Australia.

I admit it has been a while since I read this series, first published in 2000, but I’m rediscovering it with pleasure. 

The books - there are five of them -  are available in ebook, both in Kindle and Apple Books but also in paperback from Booktopia. If you need them in paperback, it’s probably best to look for them secondhand on ABEBooks.